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Category Archives: Environment

The new Parkland Memorial Hospital will open in August. (Tom Fox/Photo)

The new Parkland Memorial Hospital received a prestigious gold rating by the U.S. Green Building Council, the facility’s board of managers was informed Tuesday.

That means the design and construction of Dallas County’s public hospital scored high for energy efficiency and environmental quality. The ratings are voluntary and available to any qualifying building on the globe.

There are four levels of certification under LEED, which stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design. They include certified, silver, gold and platinum. Parkland had set a goal of earning a LEED silver rating, which required a score of 50 to 59 points. Instead, the public hospital achieved 63 points, which pushed it into the gold category. A platinum rating requires at least 80 points.

“I was very happy when we got the news last week,” said Mark Meaders, sustainable design project manager for HDR+Corgan, a joint venture that formed the design team for the hospital.

Meaders spent the past six years overseeing the design and construction aspects of the project that would be rated by the LEED rating system when the building was completed. They included the efficient use of water inside and outside the building, the use of sustainable wood, recycled construction materials, low-emitting materials and other factors such as the amount of renewable energy and how much daylight got inside the building.

“I do not know how big this is in terms of other hospitals,” Meaders said of Parkland’s gold rating. “But it’s a biggie for us.”

Pope Francis poses with members of the Italian social Cooperative PARS (Prevention, Assistance, Social Rehabilitation) during his weekly general audience at St Peter’s square on June 17, 2015 at the Vatican. AFP PHOTO / ALBERTO PIZZOLIALBERTO PIZZOLI/AFP/Getty Images

Pope Francis’s encyclical on the environment, scheduled for publication Thursday, is expected to view threats to the Earth and to people as a single problem calling for a unified response.

Laudato Sii (Praised Be) has stirred up plenty of support and opposition. It’s the first encyclical to focus on the environment.

Today the topic is science. One of the papal letter’s most telling points will be how the pope thinks environmental science — especially climate change — and religion fit together.

I’ll examine Pope Francis’s own words and those of the church official who appears to be the pope’s closest environmental advisor, a 66-year-old cardinal from Ghana.

Cardinal Peter Kodwo Turkson — mentioned as a possible choice for pope after Benedict XVI’s resignation — spelled out Pope Francis’s overall message on climate science in a speech to experts in Ireland in early March.

“The church is not an expert on science, technology, or economics,” he said. “We rely on good people like you in this room for that. But the church is an ‘expert in humanity’ – on the true calling of the human person to act with justice and charity. It is for this reason that the church reads the ‘signs of the times’ at key moments in history.”

As Turkson did in that address, Pope Francis has called the scientific case for human-induced climate change well proven. And he has said that the evidence shows an urgent need for a unified response.

In Pope Francis’s writing, science is a vital human force, but it needs faith to maintain its sense of wonder and endless curiosity. If science thinks it has reached the core of something, the pope wrote in his first encyclical, Lumen Fidei, (The Light of Faith), faith reminds it that there’s always more to learn:

The gaze of science thus benefits from faith: faith encourages the scientist to remain constantly open to reality in all its inexhaustible richness. Faith awakens the critical sense by preventing research from being satisfied with its own formulae and helps it to realize that nature is always greater. By stimulating wonder before the profound mystery of creation, faith broadens the horizons of reason to shed greater light on the world which discloses itself to scientific investigation.

The first draft of Laudato Sii has been credited to the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, which also is coordinating the encyclical’s publication. Cardinal Turkson, the council’s president, has laid out a clear vision of what the final version will say.

Turkson starts with Pope Francis’s predecessors, who described the Earth as an integrated creation with parts that not only work together, but also have their own merit. Turkson calls the harmonized system “the grammar of nature.”

He quotes St. John Paul II, who cautioned against seeing nature as just an economic resource for people that can be chopped up as desired. “On the contrary, one must take into account the nature of each being and of its mutual connection in an ordered system, which is precisely the cosmos.”

“The book of nature is one and indivisible; it includes not only the environment but also individual, family and social ethics,” that pope wrote. “Our duties towards the environment flow from our duties towards the person, considered both individually and in relation to others.”

Pope Francis’s position on the science of climate change is clear, according to Turkson: The role of greenhouse gas emissions in global warming, and the case for action, has been proven over and over.

“For Pope Francis, however, this is not the point,” Turkson writes.

“For the Christian, to care for God’s ongoing work of creation is a duty, irrespective of the causes of climate change. To care for creation, to develop and live an integral ecology as the basis for development and peace in the world, is a fundamental Christian duty.”

Turkson also goes back to 1965, to the warning that Pope Paul VI gave to the United Nations. Nuclear destruction of humanity was an everyday possibility then, but today the cardinal from Ghana and the pope from Argentina draw comparisons to a global environmental crisis.

The appeal to the moral conscience of man has never before been as necessary as it is today, in an age marked by such great human progress [Pope Paul VI said]. For the danger comes neither from progress nor from science; if these are used well they can, on the contrary, help to solve a great number of the serious problems besetting mankind. The real danger comes from man, who has at his disposal ever more powerful instruments that are as well fitted to bring about ruin as they are to achieve lofty conquests.

Pope Francis blesses the faithful as he arrives on the occasion of an audience with participants of Rome’s diocese convention in St. Peter’s Square, at the Vatican, Sunday, June 14, 2015. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia, Pool)

This Thursday, expect Pope Francis’s encyclical on the environment to define protection of nature and humanity, especially the poor and weak, as a unified duty toward God.

Today we start a series of posts exploring the facts of the pope’s expected message, entitled Laudato Sii, or Praised Be, which has generated widespread cheers and criticism before its publication.

This first post examines why the encyclical – the first ever focused on the environment — is seen as important and how environmental concerns, especially the human role in climate change, seem to fit into Pope Francis’s theology.

Later posts will look at topics such as the pope’s views on environmental science, how other faiths see climate change, and why some Catholics and others oppose his environmental push.

Advocates for action to limit the effects of emissions on warming the climate are holding up the encyclical as a turning point in worldwide awareness.

Criticism has come from those opposed to action on climate change and from some conservative Catholics put off by his emphasis on social and economic justice. Some have urged him to drop the environment and speak only on narrowly defined, traditional issues.

There’s no sign that this pope will do so.

Why is this important?

An encyclical is a letter to the church, often addressed as well “to all those of good will.” It is not a mandate or official doctrine, but a formal, serious and scholarly consideration of an important topic, meant to carry significant weight in Catholic thought and beyond.

An encyclical “sets a church agenda,” said said Bishop Kevin Farrell, bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Dallas. “It’s a message to all people, not just to Catholic people.”

An encyclical is the result of an immense amount of prayer, study, thought, reflection and consultation over a long period of time. Catholics – and many others – find them of great value in shedding light on and summarizing issues of great complexity. Many return to encyclicals time and again to reflect on the insights which they contain.

Nearly 300 encyclicals have been published since Pope Benedict XIV, in 1740, first used the word to describe a formal papal letter. The title is always in Latin, usually taken from the opening line.

Pope Francis has one encyclical to his credit, 2013’s Lumen Fidei (The Light of Faith), which he described as a completion and expansion of one begun by his predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI, who resigned.

Some have had lasting impact, such as Pope Paul VI’s Humanae Vitae (Human Life) in 1968, which confirmed opposition to birth control, and Pope Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum (Of Revolution) in 1891, a call for economic justice that has been quoted by popes ever since.

Adding to the anticipation is the pope’s global profile as an advocate for the impoverished and as a strong critic of what he has called economic exploitation of the downtrodden. Based on his and some advisors’ past statements, Pope Francis is expected to argue that the poor will suffer the most from environmental damage.

Meeting in Paris, government delegates will try to complete a new emissions agreement, to take effect after 2020, aimed at limiting the rise in the global average surface temperature to less than 3.6 degrees F.

Many scientists now say the temperature goal, adopted five years ago, is far too timid to avoid serious environmental and human consequences from global warming by 2100.

Theology: A message from Assisi

It is telling that Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, the Jesuit archbishop of Buenos Aires, chose to be called Francis upon his election as pope in 2013. St. Francis of Assisi was the 13th century saint famed, in part, for celebrating nature as a sign of God’s love for humanity.

For the encyclical’s title, Laudato Sii , Pope Francis selected a phrase from St. Francis’s poem, “Canticle of Brother Sun.” Here is the relevant portion, as rendered in English by the Third Order Regular of St. Francis:

Be praised, my Lord, through all your creatures,
especially through my lord Brother Sun,
who brings the day; and you give light through him.
And he is beautiful and radiant in all his splendor!
Of you, Most High, he bears the likeness.

Laudato Sii is expected to assert that damage to the environment — especially now, the impact on the climate via fossil-fuel emissions — is a religious and moral issue because it hurts the natural order and humanity. Previous statements by Pope Francis and his advisers, and from other church leaders, such as U.S. bishops as far back as 1991, have made similar arguments.

Other recent popes have spoken of an obligation to safeguard Creation. Pope Francis has placed it squarely on a par with traditional tenets of Catholic social teaching, especially care for the poor.

Degradation of faith and of the natural world and the exploitation of the poor, Pope Francis has said repeatedly, are all symptoms of the same moral disorder. He maintains that they require a unified religious response.

The popes have spoken of a human ecology, closely connected with environmental ecology. We are living in a time of crisis; we see it in the environment, but above all we see it in men and women. The human person is in danger: this much is certain — the human person is in danger today, hence the urgent need for human ecology! And the peril is grave, because the cause of the problem is not superficial but deeply rooted. It is not merely a question of economics but of ethics and anthropology. The Church has frequently stressed this; and many are saying: yes, it is right, it is true… but the system continues unchanged since what dominates are the dynamics of an economy and a finance that are lacking in ethics. It is no longer man who commands, but money, money, cash commands. And God our Father gave us the task of protecting the earth — not for money, but for ourselves: for men and women. We have this task! Nevertheless men and women are sacrificed to the idols of profit and consumption: it is the “culture of waste.”

Bee expert Walter Schumacher, chief executive officer of The American Honey Bee Protection Agency and co-founder of the Central Texas Bee Rescue, uses his cellphone’s flash light as he inspects a four foot by four foot hive during the extraction process from the shed of a woman’s home in Pleasant Grove in Dallas. Schumacher estimated the hive contained 200,000 to 250,000 bees. (Ben Torres/Special Contributor)

The bluebonnet, longhorn and horned frog are all iconic symbols of Texas, but the honey bee? You betcha, according to new legislation signed by Gov. Greg Abbott on Wednesday.

This is good news for the Austin-based American Honey Bee Protection Agency, which is expanding into Dallas. (And a note to local beekeepers: they’re hiring.)

“What it means for honey bees is a little bit of respect,” said Walter Shumacher, CEO of the AHBPA. He said just like people don’t shoot a mockingbird or trample bluebonnets, the new designation means people in Texas may be less likely to kill honey bees.

More than 100 types of crops grown in Texas rely on the honey bee, but worldwide bee populations are disappearing at a rate that is troublesome to folks like Shumacher.

The AHBPA has been advocating for the state pollinator designation for a year and a half, Shumacher said.

So before you grab that can of bug killer, remember – that’s a state symbol you’re spraying.

Neighborsgo editor Charlie Scudder blows on an armadillo to get it to move toward the finish line during an armadillo race at the Shawnee Trail Cowboy Day in Frisco, Texas on Nov. 8, 2014. Rose Baca/DMN

But when an editor asked me Friday, “How do you feel about bees?” I paused.

I don’t do bees. There’s just something about that little stinger and terrifying buzz.

A woman in Pleasant Grove had asked the Austin-based American Honey Bee Protection Agency to remove the hive. Walter Schumacher, the self-described bee czar and agency CEO, then called the press. He wanted to show that bees should be loved, not feared. He walks into bee hives without a bee suit. (Insanity if you ask me.)

Schumacher was working the house in Pleasant Grove with Richard Seigrist and Richard’s 9-year old son, Makai.

Makai pulled on his small bee suit, getting ready to help his dad clear the bees. Suddenly he yelped.

A bee sting? Already?

“No, it was a mosquito,” he said. “I hate mosquitoes.”

OK, if this 9-year-old with the rad ponytail could be that chill with the bees, I was certainly up for the challenge. I pulled out a new white bee suit, put on two layers of rubber gloves and tugged the hood over my head.

Schumacher takes a selfie with a four foot by four foot hive during the extraction process from the shed of a woman’s home in Pleasant Grove. Ben Torres/Special Contributor

“You’re going to need to put some duct tape on that,” Makai laughed when he saw my ankles. My shoes weren’t tall enough to connect to the suit. My thin socks would make my flesh an easy target.

Once I was properly wrapped up, I ventured into the shed. Shumacher was already in there, sans-suit, pulling open drywall that exposed the 4-foot by 4-foot hive.

OK, Charlie. Be chill, like the bees. I thought. You’re in a meadow, next to a limestone creek. The sun’s out. You have nowhere to be. There aren’t 250,000 bees all around you. Everything is chill.

And I found my bee zen. The bees flew all around me, landing on my hood, my notebook, my pen. As long as they didn’t touch my skin, we were all good.

Schumacher cut off a piece of the hive, took a big bite and handed it to me. I took it outside and did the same. The honey was light and sweet, like flowers, and runny – more watery than syrupy. The best honey I’ve ever had. (You can buy that wild honey online or at Central Market, Schumacher said.)

After the bees were packaged and the hive put away, I took my hood off and started to take off the bulky suit. Just then, I felt something in my hair on the back of my neck. I instinctually swatted it and heard a buzz.

I had spent two hours inside the shed covered in bees, but now, after I was out in the safe zone without my mask, I got a bee in my hair.

“Noooope. Nope, nope, nope,” I shouted. “I’m not about this life.”

I thought back to what Shumacher had said before we started. Cover your eyes and walk briskly away. The bee will keep running into your back, he said, but it’s more of a “shoo, get out of here” sentiment rather than a full-on attack. They’re attracted to movement, so whatever you do, don’t swat at them.

Sure enough, the bee flew into the back of my neck a few times and once I was down the driveway, I was bee-free.

I am still not a fan of close contact with bees. Too many years of pure fear, I guess. But at least I faced my fears, unlike the trepidatious cameraman from another news agency who donned the bulky bee suit but never even got near the shed.

A watchdog group says Texas’ environmental agency violated the federal Clean Air Act when it worked with electric companies to increase allowable power plant emissions without telling the public or the EPA.

Most of the large coal-burning generators at issue are in central and eastern Texas, where prevailing winds can carry their emissions to Dallas-Fort Worth.

The Environmental Integrity Project, a nonprofit investigative and advocacy group with offices in Washington, D.C., and Austin, said it and other groups are asking federal officials to block the permit changes, which the TCEQ made between 2011-2013.

The pollutant in question is particulate matter, microscopic specs of soot and other substances that reach deep into the lungs and are linked to a range of serious health risks.

“The old assumption has been that Texas can do what it wants,” said Schaeffer, who headed the EPA’s Office of Civil Enforcement from 1997-2002. “But it can’t unilaterally change Clean Air Act requirements.”

The TCEQ and the Austin-based Association of Electric Companies of Texas said the new procedures, which the AECT first proposed to the agency in 2010, adhered to the Clean Air Act and Environmental Protection Agency rules.

A sign marks a cooling station at the Salvation Army’s Carr P. Collins Center in Dallas on June 18, 2013. The Salvation Army set up 15 cooling stations that summer in Dallas-Fort Worth to help people combat the heat. (Michael Ainsworth/The Dallas Morning News) 06212013xMETRO

Climate change means it’s going to be really hot more often in Dallas in the coming decades. And more people are moving here.

The combination means human exposure to a warmer climate will increase more in urban North Texas and some of its neighboring metro areas than anywhere else in the country, a new study finds.

The scientists at the National Center for Climate Research, in Boulder, Colo., and City University of New York aren’t saying with this study that more people in Dallas or anywhere else will necessarily suffer heat stroke or other potentially deadly health effects. That’s because they can’t predict how many future residents will have air conditioning or access to emergency shelter during heat waves.

Other studies, however, have linked increasing heat to more deaths. And the new study’s authors note that extreme heat already kills more Americans than any other type of severe weather.

This graphic illustrates the expected increase in average annual person-days of exposure to extreme heat for each U.S. Census Division when comparing the period 1971–2000 to the period 2041–2070. Person-days are calculated by multiplying the number of days when the temperature is expected to hit at least 95 degrees by the number of people who are projected to live in the areas where extreme heat is occurring. The scale is in billions. (University Center for Atmospheric Research)

The researchers combined 11 different projections of 95-degrees or hotter days later this century with forecasts of population growth. None of the climate projections assumed any big cuts in greenhouse gas emissions.

They looked at what would happen if extremely hot days increased but population didn’t; if population grew but 95-degree days didn’t; and if both happened together.

Nationwide, they found that annual human exposure to extreme heat in the U.S. is expected to increase by 10 billion to 14 billion person-days — from multiplying the number of extremely hot days by the number of people who experience them.

During a comparison period of 1971-2000, the annual number was just 2.3 billion.

The increases are projected to be worst in urban areas of Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Louisiana. That puts urban Dallas and Houston in the nation’s hot spot for the human and social impacts of climate change.

Dr. Robert Haley of Dallas speaks at a news conference outside a hearing on an Environmental Protection Agency proposal to strengthen the national standard on ozone to protect public health, at Arlington, Texas, on Thursday, Jan. 29, 2015. Haley spoke in favor of the tougher standard. (Randy Lee Loftis/The Dallas Morning News)

Update, 3:12 p.m.: Dr. Robert Haley, an internist and epidemiologist, has attacked the contention of industries and the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality that a tougher ozone standard wouldn’t help public health.

Haley said a new computer model study found that a reduction in ozone of 10 parts per billion in 10 North Texas counties, if it had been achieved in 2008, would have resulted in 320 fewer hospitalizations, $10 million less in hospitalization costs, 77 fewer premature deaths and $617 million less economic loss tied those deaths.

“As physicians who care for those patients and see the asthma attacks, respiratory failure, hospitalizations and premature deaths, we believe that the citizens of these 10 counties are paying a high price for ozone pollution that could potentially be avoided,” Haley said.

A team of epidemiologists and experts in geographical information systems did the study, he said.

Haley said the Dallas County Medical Society and the Texas Medical Association “strongly endorse” dropping the ozone standard from its current 75 ppb down to 60 ppb.

But David Brymer, the TCEQ’s air quality director, told EPA officials that the state agency found the health evidence lacking. The existing standard already protects public health and a tighter standard would not prevent breathing problems or other ills, he said.

“We all share the common goal” of clean air, Brymer said.

Update, 12:44 p.m.:The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, the state’s clean-air agency, is a frequent topic at the hearing. Industries are citing the TCEQ’s assertion that a tougher national standard on ozone would yield no health benefits and is scientifically unsound. And it would kill jobs, the industries add.

Austin lawyer Christina Wisdom, speaking for the Texas Association of Manufacturers, told EPA officials that a stricter standard would not be in the nation’s best interest and would “decimate” Texas jobs just to make a “feel-good” change.

Texas Chemical Council President Hector Rivero, whose group represents chemical manufacturers, reached the same conclusion as the TCEQ, which contends that science doesn’t support a tighter standard. He also repeated a frequent assertion of opponents of a tighter standard — that changing the standard before all violator cities have met the current standard is “moving the goal line.”

But the TCEQ is also a target at the hearing. Environmentalists said progress against ozone in Texas has come only because federal rules required it, and that only a stronger federal standard can force more improvements.

“I have no doubt that it would be much worse” without federal pressure, said Christine Guldi of Dallas.

Susybelle Gosslee of the League of Women Voters of Dallas told the EPA that Texas hasn’t made an honest attempt to clean the air. Zac Trahan of the Texas Campaign for the Environment said the TCEQ’s disbelief in ozonee’s health harm had led the state agency to adopt a goal of “close enough.”

And Jim Schermbeck, of the North Texas clean-air group Downwinders at Risk, said the public was relying on the EPA instead of state officials. “Only strong federal action can salvage the situation and give Texans safe, legal air to breathe,” he said.

TCEQ Air Quality Director David Brymer is registered to speak later today.

Update, 10:30 a.m.: A few dozen people are in the Arlington City Council chamber for the EPA’s ozone hearing. In numbers alone, the speakers so far are strongly in favor of a tougher federal ozone standard, and most want the new target at the lowest level under consideration, 60 parts per billion.

Melanie Oldham, a physical therapist, told EPA officials she came to the hearing from Freeport, Texas. “That’s Freeport with an F,” she said, referring to the grade the American Lung Association gave the air quality in the heavily industrial Southeast Texas city.

Frank O’Donnell, president of the Washington, D.C.-based advocacy group Clean Air Watch, asked where someone with a breathing problem would go for diagnosis and treatment — “to a doctor or to an oil-company lobbyist?”

But Austin lawyer Jacob Arechiga, representing the coal and electric companies in the Gulf Coast Lignite Coalition, said a new ozone crackdown would endanger Texas’ coal-burning power plants. “These resources must be protected,” he said.

EPA spokeswoman Alison Davis said 110 people registered in advance to speak. The hearing goes until 7:30 p.m., giving pre-registered and walk-in speakers a chance to be heard.

Original post: The Environmental Protection Agency plans to toughen its national health standard on ozone, the air pollutant that plagues Dallas-Fort Worth. A public hearing all day Thursday at Arlington City Hall will showcase arguments for and against the idea.

EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy has proposed to reduce the standard – in essence, a limit or target – from the current 75 parts per billion to somewhere in the range of 65-70 ppb. She also has asked for comments on strengthening the standard further, down to 60 ppb.

EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy

Dallas-Fort Worth’s three-year average for 2012-2014 was 81 ppb. That was an improvement over the 2011-2013 average of 87 ppb, but still far higher than any standard McCarthy is expected to finalize by Oct. 1.

Ozone forms in the lower atmosphere when chemicals, mostly emissions from vehicles and industries, react with summer sunlight. Over decades, health researchers have linked the pollutant to lung and breathing problems, asthma attacks and new asthma cases, premature death and other ills.

Health and environmental groups say that despite solid science, politics shortchanged needed reductions in ozone in 2008 and then delayed them unnecessarily in 2011.

Independent science advisers to the EPA, mostly university researchers, last year recommended putting the standard somewhere between 60-70 ppb. But the Ozone Review Panel of the EPA’s Clean Air Science Advisory Committee said medical research showed that the standard needs to be less than 70 to protect the public with an adequate margin of safety.

That’s an explicit requirement of the Clean Air Act.
Industries that might have to reduce emissions under a new standard say the scientific case for a tighter limit is unproven. Texas’ clean-air regulatory agency, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, agrees.

Arlington and Sacramento, Calif., are hosting the only hearings on the proposal that the EPA is holding outside of Washington, D.C. The agency will also take written comments through March 17.

The hearing in Arlington runs from 9 a.m.-7:30 p.m. I’ll post updates during the day with summaries of speakers’ comments and a running tally of those for and against the tighter standard.

The new ozone standard, or target, that Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Gina McCarthy proposed Wednesday would put Dallas-Fort Worth further out of compliance.

If McCarthy’s plan survives what will be a tough public-comment period, lawsuits from industries and states — Texas could be one of them — and attempts to block it by congressional Republicans, the new ozone standard would be somewhere between 65-70 parts per billion. But McCarthy also invited comments on taking it lower, to 60 ppb.

The current standard, 75 ppb, has been an elusive goal for urban North Texas. Ozone levels have dropped over the years as a result of controls on vehicles and fuels as well as industrial emissions. But serious progress has slowed or stalled in recent years.

The ozone standard itself doesn’t require any action. It’s supposed to be a science-based statement of how much ozone people can breathe in without causing health problems, especially in the most vulnerable populations.

The steps to achieve the standard, such as tighter emissions limits, come later. Vehicles and fuels are generally federal responsibilities, while other measures are crafted by states to match local conditions.

Despite progress, new challenges emerge constantly, such as emissions from thousands of gas wells and associated equipment in North Texas’ Barnett Shale gas field in the past 10 years.

Predictions from opponents and supporters were out long before the proposal emerged. Industries are already saying the air cleanup that McCarthy’s plan would require would block economic growth.

Environmental and health groups are already saying it would protect public health against air pollution.

Here’s what McCarthy said in a statement Wednesday morning:

“Bringing ozone pollution standards in line with the latest science will clean up our air, improve access to crucial air quality information, and protect those most at-risk. It empowers the American people with updated air quality information to protect our loved ones – because whether we work or play outdoors – we deserve to know the air we breathe is safe.

“Fulfilling the promise of the Clean Air Act has always been EPA’s responsibility. Our health protections have endured because they’re engineered to evolve, so that’s why we’re using the latest science to update air quality standards – to fulfill the law’s promise, and defend each and every person’s right to clean air.”